


Of truths, twists and fates

by Iris_Celeno



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Another Gendry POV, F/M, Gendry has feelings, Ours is the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 10:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13739394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iris_Celeno/pseuds/Iris_Celeno
Summary: Gendry's POV about the infamous “you wouldn't be my family”, his last days with Arya and the Brotherhood, and a certain decision.





	Of truths, twists and fates

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: G.  
> Timeline: S3, show canon-compliant.  
> Pairing: Gendry/Arya feelings.  
> Book spoilers: None.  
> Non beta-ed, please forgive any mistake you might find.

She didn't talk to him anymore, since he told her he'd stay with the Brotherhood. She didn't not talk to him, either, and maybe it was worse. 

She would still greet him and interact with him if strictly needed. She still slept next to him, although never scooting closer after a nightmare or when the night was cold. She wouldn't try to make him change his mind, and for this small blessing he was thankful. He wasn't sure he could handle another discussion like the one they had in the cave. 

But she never shared anything personal anymore. She was guarded, like with everyone...everyone but him, before. The only signs of her resentment were little scornful undertones or a harsh flicker in her eyes she couldn't quite mask whenever his new status within the Brotherhood was mentioned.  
It was terribly efficient. Northerners were sure good at giving you the cold shoulder. Yet he found himself, perversely, looking for those signs. It was unfair, he was aware of it, but he still needed to mean something to her. Somewhere, he needed her to still care enough to bear a grudge. Or, if he were sincere, he'd rather she be angry than sad. 

It wouldn't last, anyway. He was to be erased from her life, sooner than later, when she was reunited with her family. Maybe she wouldn't even remember him or his name in a few years. Maybe she'd purposefully forget everything about her time with him and Hot Pie, like a faraway nightmare, once she was a woman grown and in her right place, married to a lord or even a king, with food and a child in her belly.  
He ignored the puzzling surge of fury sweeping over him at the idea. This was the way of the world and who was he, baseborn bastard, to try and go against it? He had stopped believing in a reasonably happy life on the very day Mott sold him to the Watch. Since then, he had settled for “not too short, not too crappy”.  
Yet Arya...reckless, daring Arya...sometimes, she made him dimly feel that he could have more than what his birth sentenced him to. He was well aware that he'd better give up on those dangerous, very dangerous thoughts beforehand. Again, she'd be gone soon.

Yes, soon he'd lose her for good, just like he had lost everyone. Only for once, the hand he had been dealt wasn't the worst possible. For the first time in his life, he was given a choice. Hence he made one.  
Mayhaps he'd finally belong somewhere. Mayhaps there was one kind of family he was allowed to have.  
Mayhaps he could have just a bit more, be just a bit more. Mayhaps he could be useful to those weaker than him. He didn't hope he could ever really be _someone_ , but he was tired of being no one. Although it wouldn't make him powerful, at least he wouldn't be so horribly _helpless_ anymore. 

That morning, he set out for his new forge at the Hollow Hill quite early. He had a lot to do, starting with polishing the plate for Lord Beric's new armor. He just had a glimpse at Arya's face as he passed nearby the hearth, where she was breaking her fast. She looked significantly paler than usual, she had for the last two days, he noticed with a vague pang of worry and guilt, but he had no time to dwell on it. Anguy grabbed him, asking for an emergency repair before his party left for a hunt and then like everyday since he'd been here, it seemed that just about everyone needed something fixed without delay. He spent the whole day working, only stopping for a short while around noon when an elderly woman from a village nearby who provided food for Lord Beric brought him bread and cheese.

When he was finally done, the sun was low on the horizon. He realized that something was amiss immediately upon joining the others. The chatters of the men drinking outside stopped. Tom and Anguy traded a dark glance as soon as they spotted him. A cold hand crushed his heart. She had said she wanted to leave. She was smart enough to succeed, he knew it first hand. Was she gone already ? Did she escape on her own, leaving him ? Was it over so soon, so suddenly ?

“She's come with a fever,” the bard told him then, and he didn't try to hold him back when Gendry rushed inside.

He almost bumped into the woman who had seen to his lunch, and who was on her way out. She was a kind of healer, and he understood why she was around today whereas they rarely had visitors. He breathed just a bit easier upon learning that Arya was better and resting now. Ignoring the warnings that it could be a bad case of marsh fever roaming around the Riverlands lately, he strode toward a recess in the rock that she finally pointed to him. It was closed with an old sheet hanging from a rope to create a kind of makeshift room. 

Arya was lying there, still as death in the dim light of a torch. 

The old crone had given her a bath or something, and for the first time he saw the girl without that layer of dirt she always hid under. She wore a shift that was clean, too, since one could see it used to be white. It was bunched around her legs, mid-thighs, and there was a thin yellow blanket in a heap at the foot of the bed...at the worst of the fever, she probably couldn't stand the contact of the rough fabric against her skin.

He blinked. His throat went dry, the muscles in his chest contracted, and he crouched next to the cot, his mind dizzy. This wasn't his friend, this wasn't Arry. 

Lady Arya of House Stark was lying there, still as death in the dim light of the torch.

There was no way one could mistake her for a boy, not like this. She was no child anymore, and when in Seven Hells did that happen.

Something stirred and then broke in his soul, and he didn't want to know what it was. Keeping his gaze on her face, he picked up the blanket from the floor and covered her. Then, he sat down next to her and observed the familiar stranger in front of him.

There was no way one could mistake her for a lowborn, either. Nothing about her was common nor ordinary. Even the pink flush of fever stressed her otherwise pale carnation, even her breath exhaled in tired pants enhanced the delicate shape of her lips. 

Yes, incredibly, everything about her was delicate. Her body was small and lithe under the cover. In the abandon of sleep she looked innocent, fragile, even. Her hands and slender fingers were so little he wondered how they could hold a sword and kill as they did; her eyebrows drew a lovely yet sarcastic -oh so Arya- arch above long-lashed eyelids, belying her usual sullen expression. How come he never noticed anything? It couldn't be only because dirt and mud and clothes too large for her had blurred curves and dulled shapes.

Suddenly, she trashed her head on the faded, tired pillow, a pained and hoarse moan escaping her mouth. On their own volition, his hands went to soothe, to cup her cheeks, to stroke her forehead, her hair.  
She lifted heavy eyelids, revealing glassy orbs of a shade that reminded him of molten metal in the fire of his forge, and there was no more room for pretense. Soft and relieved when she recognized him, then despaired and hurt when she remembered, her gaze pierced his heart like an arrow. _Better angry than sad_ , indeed. He was such a fool. Her skin suddenly felt cold like stone and a second later, her eyes fluttered closed again, on an exhausted and unintelligible murmur.

That was it. Her eyes. 

They were the reason why he never noticed her changing and growing up. Whenever he thought of Arya, it was all he pictured. Whenever he looked at her, it was all he saw. Mirrors of the soul, they said, and never truer words were spoken. Arya's soul was all steel and iron will, fast and bright like quicksilver. Her indomitable spirit, fierce personality and prickly temper relegated everything else in the shadows. Her piercing grey eyes reflected everything she was, resolute or daring or angry or surprised or wary or shrewd and sometimes, there was a mischievous, warm glint in their depths, like a rare and precious ray of sun in the cloudy northern sky. 

Twice, those eyes had been truly weary or sad. When she told him who she was; he could still hear her little lost child's voice, repeating “Lord Stark”. And when Hot Pie left them, although sorrow was softened by some hope that their friend would lead a peaceful life.

Only once, he had seen unshed tears in them. Tears that _he_ put there. 

Guilt crashed over him with a vengeance as the fearless, sometimes infuriating pain in the arse he had in mind adjusted to the vulnerable woman-child in front of him. The pretty Northern lady who wasn't supposed to suffer any hardship merged with the tough survivor.  
Experience taught him that was easier to never have than to lose. And all he ever had was so little, he couldn't fathom everything that had been taken away from her. Yet, she didn't break. Nothing broke her, it was something he had always admired in her. Now, as he let his fingers thread in her dark hair to stroke her temples, as she relaxed under his touch in her slumber, so dainty, so petite, he felt something close to awe. The enormity of her bravery and strength hit him full force, to finally express in one memory.

An image of her eyes, again. When the Mountain picked him up, at Harrenhal, her clear gaze wouldn't leave his, she wouldn't abandon him. Oh, he had tried to put on a brave act. But pain would have won over pride, and yet he knew she would have stayed with him through suffering and death, would have endured the loss without trying to spare herself. For him. 

Whereas, he thought along with a new wave of self-loathing, he tried to escape the pain of losing her by leaving her first. Of course, she'd never forget about him. It was just easier to think that she was like every other highborn.  
She wasn't, and she had no idea. She thought that things would be different for her. She thought she'd be free. She thought she'd be allowed to fight for the North. She thought they'd be allowed to be in each other's lives.  
Gendry knew better. Her brother might be an honorable man, but he was a lord like the others. He also was at war, so he needed money and allies; and the best way to get those was to trade his sisters for them...easier to do it with the one who wasn't prisoner of the Lannisters. Maybe Robb Stark wouldn't like it, but this little thing called reality wouldn't give him a choice. Arya would be betrothed and shipped off to a lord or even a king in no time...  
He closed his eyes, smothering the confused impression conjured by that thought and the sight of this unknown, growning-up Arya. She was no child anymore, but she was still way too young to be married, too young to be anyone's wife, too young...

He shook his head. 

Anyway, she would be miserable once she'd discover she was nothing more than a pawn. The mere idea made him angry on her behalf since courtesy of Mott, he was well aware how it felt to fool yourself into thinking you were valued, only to be betrayed by the very ones you trusted.  
Arya deserved so much better than what the world wanted for her or would let her be. It was easier to leave her than watching her try and fight against it and lose, easier than being heartbroken, and above all easier than being witness to her heartbreak. One of them had to be realistic, and it had always been his role in their unconventional twosome.

Except that here it made him a coward, and a selfish coward at that. 

She was the most important person in his life right now. There was no one he trusted more or who knew him better. Actually, there had been no one but her since his mother was gone. Mott had been his master; he had offered him a roof, a hope for a trade. Not a family.  
Arya...she could never be his family, although she was the family he wanted, he finally admitted in a brutal fit of honesty. If birth and status didn't matter, if the world was fair...but it wasn't.  
He placed a strand of hair behind her ear, let go of her face with reluctance. Unable to help himself, he took one of her slender hands in his and with a feather-light touch, brushed the rough pad of his thumb against the smooth tip of her fingers. 

She could never be his family, but she was his lady. 

He couldn't fight fate more than he could fight the world. And so his mind was made up. 

***

The following day, Arya was well enough to leave her cot, and the day after she had completely recovered. It was no marsh fever but plain exhaustion, Thoros stated, obviously relieved...Gendry wanted to believe that the priest was fond of her, not merely worried about losing a potential source of gold.  
Although Arya had no memory of him sitting with her, there was a definite shift in her attitude. They were almost back to normal. It was easier for him to see her as his friend, as a near child, and not as lady Arya Stark, when she was wearing men's clothes, when her face was once more covered in dirt after hunting in the morning and when she was training with Anguy, spouting profanities. 

He didn't forget who she was, and he didn't change his mind. When she went with her family he'd follow her, like he'd always done so far, like he was bound to. He just couldn't leave her like this. He wouldn't cower. He owned it to her, and maybe to himself.  
He didn't want to be ungrateful to the Brotherhood, those men who were willing to welcome him. He'd still join them and smith for them after Arya...didn't need him anymore. If they rejected him because he chose Arya over them, well, he'd find another way for himself; a smith never lacked work after all, less during wartime. But he doubted that Lord Beric would oppose him. The man was kind and certainly aware, too, that Gendry wouldn't be absent for long.  
He ignored a painful sting in his heart as well as the little voice that whispered nonsense in the back of his mind. He couldn't change anything to the way of the world. He'd take the blows and make do, as always. 

Tonight, he'd talk to Lord Beric and Thoros. 

***

He never got to talk to anyone. The Hollow Hill had a visitor, that day. A beautiful priestess with hair as red as her cloak.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Because I have a deplorable fondness for those two. And because I don't believe that, when push came to shove, Gendry would have let Arya go (the decision was never his, in the end).  
> I found lately this one-shot I wrote about the same time as my previous one-shot, Frozen Fury, it's a kind of a companion piece. I retooled it in a tad less melodramatic version than it initially was-hopefully.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
